


cold rye

by fadewords



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Autistic Caleb Widogast, Food, Gen, Mild Angst, takes place down the tunnels prior to the Shenanigans at the end of ep50
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-08
Updated: 2019-02-08
Packaged: 2019-10-24 10:30:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17702684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fadewords/pseuds/fadewords
Summary: Caleb sits cross-legged with a book in his lap, reading half by magic-light and half by memory, mouthing some of the lines as he goes. He turns the page, a delightfully polysyllabic word on his tongue, soft, half-vowels, and blinks down at a bowl of stew.(or: nott slips food in caleb's pockets. she is not the first, and neither is he.)





	cold rye

Caleb sits cross-legged with a book in his lap, reading half by magic-light and half by memory, mouthing some of the lines as he goes. He turns the page, a delightfully polysyllabic word on his tongue, soft, half-vowels, and blinks down at a bowl of stew.

It was not there a moment ago. And yet here it sits, on top of his book, innocuous and steaming, dripping condensation on the pages below, threatening to leave a _ring_ —

He snatches it up. Cradles it in both hands, finds it pleasantly warm and not stinging hot, for all the steam. Frowns down at it, and then back up at the group. Who—?

Caduceus.

The others are relaxed and still in familiar poses—Nott crouched down, balancing her flask on her knees, Beau leaning back on her hands, one leg bent and the other slung flat, Jester sprawled on her front, drawing, feet dangling in the air, Fjord leaning against the tunnel wall, eyes closed, Yasha sitting on her knees, tracing patterns in the dirt at her side—but Caduceus is mid-motion, settling down cross-legged by the fire. The clear culprit.

He catches Caleb’s eye, waves slow, a slower smile tugging at one corner of his mouth. “Dinner. Thought you might like some.”

Caleb nods, mutters his thanks, and sets the bowl down. He will eat later.

He turns several more pages, then picks up the bowl and eats, not because he is particularly hungry—he is never particularly hungry—but because he can feel Nott staring at him from over the top of her flask.

The stew is as good as ever—Clay is quite talented—but Caleb barely tastes it. He is focused more on the pages he is still turning between bites, and on not spilling. (The not-spilling is the trickier bit. Caleb has never been the most tidy of eaters.)

He manages, mostly. A few close calls, a few drops of stew dripped on his already-grimy bandages, but not a single fleck dotting the crisp yellow pages.

He takes another bite and begins to scan a new paragraph—

Pauses mid-word. There’s a slight tug at his side, a tiny pull on the heavy fabric, hardly noticeable, except for the way the lining brushes feather-light against his skin through his shirt, which is, abruptly, _very_ , skin-crawlingly noticeable. And then there’s nothing. Of course. Of course.

Caleb glances down and to the side, but Nott isn’t there. Glances across the way, and there she is, just as before, knees up, flask resting on top, taking a long swig. Not so much as a single hair out of place to suggest she’s moved, not a single scattered stone. All visual evidence suggests she’s kept still as sticks.

But the little weight in his pocket says otherwise. She’s left him something. A present of some kind.

Food, he supposes. It is usually food, when she slips him things during mealtimes. (It is also usually food when she slips him things outside of mealtimes—but then sometimes it is a potion, or a bit of gold, or a little book. During meals, though, she tends to stick to food and food alone.) Scraps of meat, stringy vegetables she can’t digest so well with her goblin system, starchier ones that she _can_ but sneaks him anyway, candies from Jester, sometimes with and sometimes without the shimmery paper they come wrapped in, berries, little slices of hard cheese….

(On one memorable occasion, fairly early on in their partnership, it was bits of bruised pear. It took him several hours to notice and by that time he wound up with a coatful of awful mush and sticky fabric and stickier fingers.)

Caleb thinks of the meal they are having—stew, grainy, wet—and slips his fingers in his pocket cautiously, eyes fixed on his book and not his friend. They do not find stew. (Of course not. Nott is too clever to pull a stunt like that, foolish of him to consider otherwise.) Instead, a few rough chunks of bread.

Rye, he thinks.

And then he is young, so young, back in the Zemni Fields, and it is winter, and not a good winter, the harvest has been so poor, the town abuzz with talk of low-yield and dry rot and other things that he knows are not good, not good, not good—

His mother makes him a second sandwich. His trousers hover ever-higher above his ankles. His mother lets him pluck the cheese from her plate. His trousers pinch round his belly. His mother pulls her skirt-strings tight and tucks oven-warm rye in his pockets.

—The rye in his pockets is not warm.

It is not warm. It is cool, and it is dry, and it is from the little stand they visited this morning. It is from Nott.

Caleb wonders, for a moment, what winters in Felderwin are like. Wonders if there were ever any particularly bad ones, poor harvests, if Nott ever, for her son—

But he knows.

She’s told him, after all—told all of them—about a very bad winter indeed. (The worst one, undoubtedly.) About Luke, starving in front of her. About the things she did to save him. (And even if Caleb did not know all of these details—this is Nott. She sacrifices like breathing.) So—so of course.

Of course it is not a question of _if_.

Caleb thinks of that awful winter, and of Nott, and of Luke, and of his own mother—and of Nott—and of Luke, and of Luke, and of Luke, and his bright blue eyes, and he wants to abandon his bowl.

He curls his fingers tight around it instead, pressing hard into the wood, and makes himself eat. (He can still feel Nott’s eyes on him.)

The stew is bland and tasteless and so grainy Caleb wants to spit it out. He thinks of tightened waistbands and breathing and he makes himself swallow.

It is fine.

He finishes the stew. Considers, briefly, pulling out the rye and mopping up the last little bits. (Remembers, briefly, piercingly, copying his mother so many years ago, little fingers clumsily maneuvering the slice of bread, soaking up the last bits of soup so that there would be no waste, no waste, no waste.)

He licks the bowl clean instead and sets it aside. Goes back to his book.

When he glances up from it a few moments later, unable to stop himself, Nott’s eyes gleam back in the half-dark, glowing satisfied yellow to bright, pale blue.

(The wrong pale blue—but nothing can be done about that, not yet.)

(Not yet.)

He looks down again. Turns a page. Doesn’t think of blue or breathing or the little weight in his pocket or how it burns even though the bread is so, so cold.

Doesn’t think at all, just reads, and turns pages, and mouths words, long into the night.

(It is fine.)


End file.
